


just take me with you when you go

by youatemytailor



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Gen, I'm sorry but I'm not sorry, Post Avengers (Movie), this is going to hurt, this is the way the world ends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 08:26:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youatemytailor/pseuds/youatemytailor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They've always had expiry dates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just take me with you when you go

**Author's Note:**

> do not pity the dead; pity the living.

 

>   
>  _This is the way the world ends_
> 
> _This is the way the world ends_

He dies first.

Everyone always expects these things to be a big deal. Heroes to die ‘worthy’ deaths, quotes and all. To _go out_ _fighting_ in a beautiful, final act of self-sacrifice, drowned in goodbyes, draped in flags, worlds saved and peace at last. Dead with smiles on their faces. Not before coughing out some monumental last words, though, about power and responsibility and love and justice, to move people to tears, to give hope to the little guy. Their advice to echo though eternity, quoted and misquoted for a thousand years to come, final words tattooed on the ankles and ribcages and wrists of those who misunderstand, smiling faces hanging on dorm room walls and printed on t-shirts and plastered on cheap coffee mugs that only tourists ever buy. Idols, worshipped as shining beacons of bravery, of justice, of  _good_ , until their bones have turned to dust. After too, sometimes.

_Killed in action,_ they’ll say later, under parades and flags and fireworks. A medal of valour, definitely. A holiday to honour their memory, maybe. If they're popular enough.

They're built out of skin and bone and blood and guts but no one expects them to die ordinary. To quietly fizzle out of existence, to be _normal_ , just in death. No one expects it to just be a random mission, a random target, a random bullet. A faceless nobody firing it, even though he regrets ever being born, later, in a dark sewer a few miles outside of Krasnodar.

She watches him get hit. She’s watched him get hit a million times before, watched him bleed out for hours before they could call for back-up, watched him cling on, tooth and nail and sheer _force of_ _will,_ where any lesser man would roll over and die. Stubborn to a fucking fault, she’s watched him stumble, watched him  _crawl_ his way across war-zones, body littered with bullets, dragging his feet to the next safehouse – bow in hand, still covering her ass, still ten times better than any agent, any partner, even half-dead. Face white with blood loss, arm in a makeshift sling, leg wrapped in a tourniquet made out of whatever the hell they could get their hands on, he’d _still_ be sporting that shit-eating grin, the twist in his lips that said _just a flesh wound, darlin'_ loud and clear and obnoxious as always, all without a single word.  

Like this – just like this – she’s watched him pull through, time and time again.

They always pulled through.

But this is different. The way his body recoils, crumples, the way it falls to the ground, awkward and loose-limbed and  _wrong_. The way her heart's suddenly in her throat, the way her vision's blurred, the way fear hits her so hard and so fast it gives her whiplash, fills her up, every nook and cranny until it’s all that’s left. Because she makes her living on death and knows, _knows_ what it looks like without having to feel for a pulse.

A shot through the head, dead before she reaches him, before he can say anything, dead before he hits the ground.

_"Hawkeye is down."_

* * *

 

She doesn’t remember his last words.

That’s the first thing people think about, isn’t it? The good old cliché.

Knowing them, it's something about the mission, something to do with intel, the mark, a short “Target acquired,” through a comm link or an unnecessary “I’ve got your six,” standing back to back in the middle of a shitstorm. Or, knowing Clint, a joke or innuendo somewhere along the way that she’d rolled her eyes at, punched him on the shoulder for.

Their last conversation, she remembers.

Back on base, two days before they’d left, sitting in the staff lounge with his head in her lap, he was supposed to be catching up on the mission briefing he’d slept through. _Supposed to be_ , because the file wasn’t being read, not by any stretch of the imagination; lying there splayed open and abandoned across his chest, the technically-top-secret photos of the marks falling out of it and all over the floor. He was watching her clean the new Browning she’d picked up from R&D, instead, sharp eyes following the movements of her hands as she picked apart the gun and put it back together faster than it should be humanly possible. 

The tiny excuse for a TV hanging attached to the far wall was halfway through playing _The Shining_ on mute and he’d poked her in the ribs when she sneered at it, faked outrage when he found out she’d never actually seen _Cujo,_ and eventually declared – flippantly, to no one in particular – that their “relationship/friendship/partnership/whatevership” was effectively over until she had rectified this horrible mistake.

She was sure she wasn’t missing much, really, given how much _Pet Cemetary_ sucked, but he’d promised her, then, to lend her his copy of _Cujo_ as soon as possible, the minute they got back from Burma, promised it was excellent, _honest_ , promised it would “scare the living fucking bejesus outta you, I swear.”

After he was done ranting, after he’d gone back to reading the file like he was supposed to, she glanced down at him and pointed out that given their shared profession, the fact that he was scared of a dog with rabies made her question Fury’s hiring decisions. He’d rolled up the briefing into a tube and swatted at her, for that, and she’d swatted back and he’d poked her side and she’d prodded his gut until things descended into a misguided wrestling match right there where the coffee table used to be and it got messy and they broke things because Clint was a six year old inside and she never turned down a challenge. They rolled around for a while, pinning one another down in turns and trying to get the upper hand but it ended the way it was always going to end; with her thighs around his neck. He didn’t look all that bothered, really, didn’t struggle and didn’t tap out until his grinning face went purple, and she was laughing, too, by the time he rolled over and chuckled “ _fuck,_ what a way to go,” into the carpet, by the time he finally gave up, seconds before he was about to pass out.

He’d snagged her ankle and tugged her back down when she’d smirked victoriously and attempted to rise to her feet, and they broke what little was left standing in the room during the rematch that followed.

 

* * *

 

It’s after – _after,_ like her life has been split in two – and she’s still in Burma, in the safehouse waiting to be extracted when she finds an old VHS at the bottom of her duffel bag, the copy tattered and old and well-loved, cover held together with surgical tape that has started to fray at the edges. A yellow sticky-note still tacked onto the front blocks the snarling mouth of a dog and advises her to _watch it with the lights on, princess,_ in familiar chicken-scratch writing that's barely legible. 

She looks away from the body bag in front of her and eyes burning, almost throws the thing against the wall. 

 

* * *

 

“Bring him back.”

He turns to look at her and there is grief there, immediately, in the way his brow furrows, the way it settles behind his eyes. Pity, too, she realises after a moment, and the sentiment is so unfamiliar that it crawls along her skin, up the back of her throat, threatens to shallow her steady breathing. When he speaks, his tone makes her feel sick with something that tastes like rage but isn’t.

“My lady,” he says, careful, like he's treading on broken glass (because he is, sharp and jagged and begging to cut), “I am afraid that is not in my power.”

It’s not a question, but in the empty room around them it echoes like one. “Your brother.”

He grimaces, and there’s the pity again, so gentle it makes her teeth ache. “Loki is powerful, yes. More so than I. But even he – I do not think – Nothing can bring back the –” he stops, then, swallows his words, looks at the floor.

He doesn’t say what’s never going to stop rolling through her head; dead, dead, dead, dead, _dead._

“The laws of nature are as unforgiving in Asgard as they are on Earth,” he finishes instead, an apology to the floor, like that’s enough.

“I see,” she says. She's gone before he looks up. 

They never see her again.

 

* * *

 

She's on the other side of the world when they bury her best friend. She's too busy burying a knife in the gut of a drug lord, too busy dropping his entire security personnel around him. Too busy watching one of them beg for mercy before she splits open his throat, watching, still, as he falls to his knees, choking on his own blood before he joins his friends on the floor.

They litter the ground, like flies.

She's running down an alley somewhere south of Tangier, leaping over a trash can, kicking through a door, a family frozen in the middle of eating dinner staring open mouthed over their shoulders because she's sprinting through their house, when Steve gets choked up standing behind a podium, trying to say a few words about a man he barely knew. She’s sliding underneath a gap in a gate, swinging across a laundry line and crashing through a window as cameras flash thousands of miles away, glaring from every angle, documenting the way Thor stands there stoic, head down and helmet in his hands, Fury a few paces behind in civilian clothing, trying to look small and unimportant in an attempt avoid the press and failing spectacularly. Tony's a good distance away, in the back in jeans and a t-shirt, dark sunglasses concealing the tightness around his eyes but doing nothing to hide the set to his jaw; a solemn, strained kind of look that doesn’t fit his face right. His hand is stroking Pepper's hair, her head buried into his shoulder, and the seat on his other side is empty; no one knows where Bruce is, no one's gone after to bring him back. The 'other guy's' hard to track.

The world weeps. New York mourns the loss of a hero, sobbing in front of their TV sets.

 

* * *

 

She's panting, crouched in cover in the extraction zone when the speeches are done and they lower the casket into the ground. She lunges out at a thug who has managed to elude her, beats him to a bloody pulp, sits on his chest and disfigures his face until she dislocates a knuckle on his jaw, until she hears the crack of his nose, until her fingernails are caked with red, until Steve lays a small bouquet of yellow flowers on the dirt beside an unmarked grave.

They bury his bow with him.

 

* * *

 

She goes from mission to mission, flying herself, working alone, not returning to base for over a year. If she's a little more manic, a little less careful, a little less perfect in her hits, it's not enough to bench her because even at her worst, she’s the best they’ve got.

Before long, something else invades New York and the Avengers are down two members instead of one. Tony has long since abandoned his attempts to track her down, long since stopped trying to weasel her location out of Fury, who keeps tabs on her but lets her be. Wolverine fills in. She hears Spider-Man makes an appearance.

The world is her oyster; she runs and hides and kills and maims. It's not a cure, but it's as close as she ever gets. 

 

* * *

 

A year later, there's a simple blank headstone in a small, nondescript graveyard just outside Waverly. No date, no name; extra precautions, she supposes, to keep the fans at bay. Soft marble rolls underneath her fingers as she traces her thumb across the sun-warmed outline of an arrow, chiselled faintly across the top.

She sets the tape down onto the ground, snug against the stone, where flowers should go. “You probably want this back,” she says. “It sucked ass, by the way.” She pauses, her palm spread flat against the dirt. “Wuss.”

The wind picks up around her. _"You're such a sap,"_  she hears him say and almost smiles, almost snaps _shut up_ , the voice of a ghost in her ear.

 

* * *

 

She falls too, a year after that.

There are no holidays to honour her, either. A second blank headstone joins the first ( _home is where the heart is_ ).

That's just how it goes. Assassins come with expiry dates.

 

 

> _This is the way the world ends_
> 
> _Not with a bang but with a whimper._


End file.
